


What He Was Born For

by helsinkibaby



Category: West Wing
Genre: Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-11-29
Updated: 2002-11-29
Packaged: 2017-10-18 17:59:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/191650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helsinkibaby/pseuds/helsinkibaby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam leaves the White House</p>
            </blockquote>





	What He Was Born For

He was born in the summer, a glorious day his mother always told him, a day when the sun shone brightly, as if welcoming this new life into the world. Growing up, it was as if his life was touched by that same sunshine. His mother worshipped him, just as he worshipped his father, wishing that he could be just like him one day. Likewise, his father cherished his son, encouraging him in his ambitions, telling him that he knew he'd be just like his dad. A successful lawyer, partner in a big firm, with a beautiful family.

At the age of thirty-one, all his dreams, their dreams, were coming true. He was a month away from making partner in the second biggest law firm in New York. He had a fiancée that he loved, and they were going to get married the following year. He had a nice apartment, good friends.

He had it all, and there were times when he felt like he was born to do what he was doing, to be there at that point in time.

But there were times when he looked around himself and wondered when his life was going to start feeling like his life. There were times when he felt like he was just a kid playing at being a lawyer, rather than the real thing. Times when he felt as if he and Lisa were two kids playing house instead of a man and a woman preparing to spend their lives together.

There were times when he felt like he was waiting for his life to start.

Then one day he left a meeting to get some numbers and was met by the news that an old friend was in his office. He was happy to see him, of course he was, and they went to get hot dogs, no matter that it was nine o'clock in the morning. He ate his hot dog, Josh passed, but he didn't pass on asking Sam to come and work for Hoynes. Sam told him about Lisa, that they were getting married in September, but he didn't know if the shadow that passed over Josh's face was because he didn't get his way, or because he and Lisa didn't get along, or because Sam was protecting oil companies from litigation. Sam knew that Hoynes wasn't the real thing, knew it by the way Josh was talking, and he wasn't going to leave his life, this life that he was born to, for anything less.

Josh was going to Nashua for something that he characterised as a waste of time, but he asked if he saw the real thing there, should he come back and tell Sam.

Sam didn't think that he'd see him again so soon.

But he did start thinking about the question that Josh had asked him - what was he doing? And it really wasn't clear to him.

That night, he stayed up late, looking up oil disasters on the Internet, horrified at what he saw there. Horrified at how many oil companies were culpable, how many avoided paying damages because of lawyers' cleverness, lawyers just like him.

He never wanted to be one of those lawyers.

He went in to the meeting the next day and he pleaded his case, he fought his corner, and he tried to do some good, but he knew he wasn't getting anywhere.

Then there was a knock at the window, and a soaking wet Josh was grinning at him, dimples ablaze, pointing to his face. His bad poker face.

He'd seen the real thing, and was coming to share it with Sam.

Sam walked out that door and he'd never looked back. Not even when it cost him Lisa, and the life that he'd been born to.

He walked out of that room, into a new life.

A life where he believed in what he was doing, he believed in Jed Bartlet, he believed in the people that he was working with.

He believed in himself.

Election Day was like his first birthday, and the party happened two months later, but he was born the day that he walked out of the meeting. Walking down the streets of Manhattan, the rain baptised him as Josh preached an enthused sermon in praise of Josiah Bartlet.

He was born in the autumn of his thirty-second year.

He's not sure when he died, except that it happened a little bit at a time.

It could have been during the whole Laurie thing, where an innocent friendship was made to look like something tacky, something sordid. Something that it wasn't. He told CJ that he cared about what it was, not what it looked like, and he told Josh that he didn't mind being held to a higher standard of behaviour, but he minded being held to a lower one. He'd been so sure, so completely sure, that nothing would come of it, that he wouldn't get found out. He'd been wrong.

It could have been then, or it could have been a week or so later, when he pulled CJ to the ground as the world exploded in a hail of gunfire and a thousand shards of blue and red glass fell around them, raining on them like coloured snowflakes. Josh's face was still that night, pale, so unlike the face that had shone at him like a beacon through the window the day that he was born, and the dark blood made a harsh contrast to his waxy pallor as it soaked through his fingers, his shirt, leaking across the pavement.

It could have been when he had to screw over a friend. He could still see the look of anger on Sarah Jordan's face. "Anytime we can screw you, count on getting screwed."

It could have been when a drop-in was inserted in the speech to the GDC, the speech that he'd spent hours, days working on, going through draft after draft, much to the amusement and irritation of Ginger, Bonnie and the other communications staff.

It could have been when he found out that his father had lied to him, that he'd been living a double life for twenty-eight years. That all his memories of a happy family life, the life he'd wanted for so long, had been a lie.

It could have been just after that, when he was late at the White House one night, and got called into the Oval Office to talk to the President and Leo. He hadn't thought anything of it, not even when Toby had told him that he'd be in his office when he was done. It was only when he heard the words "Eight years ago, I was diagnosed with a relapsing/remitting course of Multiple Sclerosis," that things had begun to fall into place. Toby's bad mood over the last week or so. Josh's quietness, his particular brand of enthusiasm quenched by some unknown force. CJ's long meetings that day with the White House Counsel. All of that made sense, and the thought struck him immediately, and with force.

He'd been the last to know.

It shouldn't have irked him as much as it did; after all, someone had to be the last to know. This time, it had been him. That was the luck of the draw.

He'd tried not to let it get to him even as they shouted him down at every turn. When he broached the subject of postponing the announcement after Mrs Landingham's funeral. And again when he told them that the President had never apologised, and that he needed to. Connie made the same arguments to him that he'd made to Leo, and he'd told her just what Leo had told him, and he'd tried to believe it.

But he hadn't, and he wonders if that showed through.

CJ told him during that horrible New Year, when the restart of the hearings hung over them like the Sword of Damocles and he was trying to refute bogus charges in a book of lies that it felt like he was fixating on the knuckleheaded stuff because he couldn't do anything to fix the big stuff. All he could think of was that he'd been doing a lot of that lately.

Eliminating the penny.

The seatbelt law.

The book.

All the times where he'd sat in a meeting and pleaded his case, and fought his corner, and tried to do some good, knowing that he wasn't getting anywhere.

That wasn't what he'd come here to do. That wasn't what he was born to do.

He was born to write about curing cancer in the next ten years.

He was born to speak about over-reaching being good, about how government should be optimistic.

But he wasn't allowed to do that either.

So, he went on doing what he'd been doing. Writing answers about affirmative action that went unused. Battling for the Superconducting Supercollider. Getting blamed for screw-ups that weren't even his fault.

Getting shut out of important meetings about the Vice-President.

That one hurt, because it reminded him of how he was the last to know about the MS. Because it reminded him of the charge in the book, the one that he'd talked to Toby about, that they'd been sent out of the room on a nonsense errand while matters of real import went on without them. Josh told him that it was nothing big, that he'd needed to do the thing with Hoynes, but Sam had still been annoyed.

Rather, he knew he should have been annoyed.

What he was, was strangely resigned.

Then there was the mother of all screw-ups. Not only did he hand the Republicans some free publicity, not only did he get the damn videotape on national television, right where they didn't want it, he got screwed over by a friend doing it. Bruno Gianelli reaming him out didn't help either, and that night when he went home, he had nightmares about standing the bullpen in the middle of all those televisions.

He got angry, and he got even, pulling out every trick he knew. Sugar subsidies and the Everglades, strongly worded releases, Presidential motorcades, he did it all. Toby freaked him out, and told him that he was proud of him, and he loved the theatre, and for a moment, a few moments, all was right with the world.

Then Simon died senselessly, and Shareef's plane went missing, and he was reminded of how capricious life could be.

The summer of the re-election campaign is a blur, but Election Night is in sharp focus, the most prominent emotion the ones he felt when the networks called the election. He was thrilled of course, everyone was, or at least, that's how he reacted outwardly. When he sat down though, when he thought about it, what he was feeling wasn't the unmitigated joy of four years previous, nor was it the same hope and exultation coursing through his veins.

All he felt was relief.

Under that, there was nothing.

He thinks it was then.

Sitting in the middle of the bullpen, champagne in his hand, music blaring, CJ doing _The Jackal_ , people dancing, the world bright and new with possibility.

That was the moment he died.

He did his best, he really did. For four months, he was a dead man walking, until he realised that he couldn't live like that any more. He was too young to feel so old, so jaded. He didn't tell anyone that of course. He let them think he was leaving for pastures new, new challenges, new adventures. Toby tried to talk him out of it, before shaking his hand and telling him once more that he was proud of him. Josh blustered and yelled and stormed off, not reappearing in his office until the last day, when he was propelled there by a red-eyed Donna, who'd hugged him and told him not to be a stranger. Josh had tried to talk him out of it, just once more, before hugging him, and wishing him well. CJ had smiled with tears in her eyes, telling him that he'd always be the man who saved her life. Leo had shaken his hand, and the President had given him a Dickens First Edition, and Bonnie and Ginger had pilfered one of Toby's Spalding Balls as a souvenir.

Still though, it should have been harder to say goodbye.

He'd talked them out of a big farewell; he hadn't wanted that. So instead of a party and fanfare, he'd left quietly, like he'd done every day for so long, except he had a box instead of a briefcase, and he wasn't coming back in the morning.

He should have felt sad. He should have felt scared.

He just felt free.

He was born in the spring of his thirty-seventh year.

This time, there was neither sunshine to welcome his birth, nor any rain to baptise him. There was no father to encourage him, no friend to tell him all about the real thing.

This time, he didn't know what he was born to do.

But he was looking forward to finding out.

end


End file.
